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Saturday, July 9, 2016

Rustic Diaper Cake

I've recently realized that "diaper cakes" have developed a bad rap for being cheesy (at best) and maybe even downright tacky. "Diaper cake" is definitely not a term that sounds particularly appealing if you haven't heard of them. Compound this with the traditional method rolling and securing each individual diaper with a rubber band, and they can be pretty tedious not only to construct, but also for the recipient to use. I'm hoping to change that!

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My goal with each of these cakes is to make them as realistic looking as possible so that they can be used as a pretty enter piece for a shower or even a cute (albeit temporary) decoration in the nursery. I draw my inspiration from real wedding and birthday cakes.

I made this diaper cake for the newest (and sweetest!) addition to our extended family. Because this diaper cake wasn't for a baby shower and I intended for the cake to be able to be used as a temporary decoration in the nursery, I used size 2 diapers for this project so that mom had a little time to enjoy it before it needed to be disassembled.

One thing that I really like about making a diaper cake this way is that as long as the paper rings aren't crushed or damaged they are completely re-giftable/reusable.

Box of 7th Generation unbleached diapers (I used a 72 count box of size 2 diapers for this project - because these diapers are unbleached they have a brown color that works nicely with this color scheme)

High Temperature Hot Glue Gun & Glue sticks

Your favorite adhesive for card-stock projects

Optional

Ribbon (for the base)

Die Cutting Machine

Corner Sprigs Die by Spellbinders

As usual, begin by cutting the Rustic Diaper Cake Cricut Canvas. Before you cut, add the baby's name or any sentiment and attach the letters to the cream banner pieces. A word of caution: This is a very large canvas and it has a tendency to crash the plugin if you try to manipulate the file before it is finished loading, so let it load for a bit before trying to manipulate the file. I have arranged the images in this canvas so that they cut out using 7 sheets of paper in the colors I mentioned above.

This project uses images from the following cartridges:

Flower Shoppe

Giant Flowers

Ribbons & Rosettes

Creative Bug

Mother's Day Bouquet

The rings are made by joining the border pieces from the ribbons and rosettes cartridge end to end. The base uses (5) sections, the middle layer uses (4) sections, and the top tier uses (3) sections. I prefer to use Elmer's rubber cement for joining card-stock together because it has a strong bond and does not warp the paper. You apply it by coating the sides of the card-stock you are joining in a thin layer of rubber cement and letting the product dry before attaching the pieces together.

Save the ovals from the center of this cut. You will use them to make some of the flowers later in the project.

Once you have the rings assembled, it is time to fill them with diapers. Carefully fill each ring with diapers in a spiral pattern. Take care not to snag the edges of the border ring.

Once you have filled your rings with diapers, you can wrap a ribbon around the base layer. I secured mine with a few dots of hot glue.

Assemble the flowers

Blue Flower:

Glue a glass gem to the center of each blue flower

Bend the petals as desired to achieve a more natural look

White Flower (spiral):

Roll each flower and secure with a drop of glue. These flowers have a little round base that you can put hot glue on and attach the bottom edge of the flower to it.

White Flower (snow bell):

take each of the star shaped white flowers and clip slits towards the center so that you can fold each petal forward easily.

roll each petal around a pen or paintbrush handle

fold all of the petals forward

form three beige ovals with a pen

glue the ovals around the base of the white flower

Rose:
This flower is pretty complicated. I highly recommend following the instructions for assembling this flower. Instructions begin on page 24 of the Giant Flower Digital Handbook.

Once you have all of the flowers assembled, you can arrange and glue them to the rings of tier of your diaper cake. Take care to only glue the flowers to the border ring and not to the diapers inside. Tuck a few vines in with the flowers for a little extra whimsy. On this project I actually cut out my vines with a spellbinders die because it is very small and intricate and sometime I have problems with cutting such small details on my machine. However, I included the vines from the creativebug cartridge if you want to attempt them with your Cricut.

At this point all you should have left is the topper. Take two skewers and clip off the pointed end. Once they are blunted, hook them into the sides of the top tier of your cake as shown below. This will help you measure your twine.

Cut two sections of jute twine to span the distance between your skewers. & glue in place. Glue the onesies and banner pieces to the jute twine.

You now have a finished cake! I hope that you enjoyed this project. Please leave me a comment and let me know how this project worked for you & Thanks for visiting my blog!

For your convenience, some of the products I used on this project are linked in the "What you need" section above.